Why acoustic treatment?

[AdamWathan]

if you cant justify treating your room or getting good monitors. then dont do it. it will show in your mixes. it is as simple as that.

Ohh I get it now, thanks for answering the question wise-ass.

 

[AdamWathan]

So basically what I've put together here is that you want the most balanced and neutral sounding room to minimize deviations from the intended sound based on imperfections in other people's listening environments... It's impossible to create a listening environment where you can make a mix that will sound good everywhere, but if your mix sounds good in a perfectly neutral room then there is a smaller chance of any frequencies being skewed to the point of the mix sounding horrible in someone else's room.

I knew all along that acoustic treatment was mandatory, every audio engineer in the world can't be wrong, I just wanted to understand the reasoning behind it, so thanks to everyone who responded helpfully.

 

[AdamWathan]

It sounds to me like you have it backwards dude. An untreated corner will boost/exaggerate the low frequencies. Bass traps will help prevent this from happening. So if a mix you do in your bassy-sounding bedroom sounds like it has the right amount of bass, there will be too little bass when the average listener plays the CD in their normal setting and expects it to sound like all other professional CDs he is used to hearing. Generally, having too-little bass is not the issue...it's having too much. So if your overly-bassy mix sounds good in your room (due to mixing in a room that cancels some of the low frequencies), then just imagine how disgustingly bassy it will sound elsewhere!

I thought that too, but every time I read about someone treating their room their reactions are always like "I hear so much bass in my room that I didn't know was there now!" and what not... Why is that? Is it because of the standing wave cancellations that are eliminated? And if so, then isn't my original statement true...? I think really it can skew your low end in either direction I guess, so bass traps affect different rooms in different ways, based on the origin of the sound and the dimension of the room...

Regardless, this summer will be bass trap building season.

 

[axeman720]

Im gonna get really untechnical here for ya dude,


Try and eq the lows and lowmids of a tom in a room that has horrible bass nodes. Better yet, just try and eq a bass guitar to fit in the mix properly.

Now go listen in another room, try not to shoot yourself.

Bass trapping is whats gonna help make sure that your mixes sound as good as possible everywhere. The key is translation.


I've mixed albums in great room and i've mixed albums in horrible rooms. I cant begin to tell you how INSANELY frustrating it is in a horrible room. Sometimes you may think everything sounds great and your realize its horrible when you go to another room, i've also been in a rooms where i know i just flatout cant hear some frequencies. Once you realize where the real problems are in your room and dont fix them, its literally MADDENING. I cant describe to you how horrible of an experience it can be.

 

[everybody's x]

Ok, let's say you have a standing wave that creates a phase cancellation at the 70hz, and 160hz frequency in your untreated room. You don't hear it, so you crank it. At the same time you have other frequencies that are emphasized due to the same reasons. Let's say 40hz and 125hz. You cut those frequencies because they appears to be louder than Manowar. You make a kick-ass mix with guitars bigger thatn the Niagara falls, drums larger than the Grand Canyon, and a mix that oozes of professionalism.

Now, in the untreated living room there's a sofa. The sofa works as a bass trap that removes the 120hz standing wave. There's also curtains, a bookshelf, flowers and a dvd-shelf on the wall that works as diffusers. Now, your incredibly-fat-low-end-super-chunk-djent-pro mix that you think sounds great, sound like a boxy head-inside-a-bucket piece of shit. People will think you suck at mixing and they'll hate you.

With a treated room, you adjust the right frequencies, so all the shit that appears in the living room doesn't sound worse than anything else with a billion dollar budget.

That's why.

FTW

 

[TheDude]

I thought that too, but every time I read about someone treating their room their reactions are always like "I hear so much bass in my room that I didn't know was there now!" and what not... Why is that? Is it because of the standing wave cancellations that are eliminated? And if so, then isn't my original statement true...? I think really it can skew your low end in either direction I guess, so bass traps affect different rooms in different ways, based on the origin of the sound and the dimension of the room...

All rooms have resonance frequencies, like when you blow in a bottle. That's the resonance frequency. Pour some water in it = less space = higher frequency. Same thing with rooms. Standing waves cancel frequencies, resonance waves boost frequencies. I didn't write that the last time. Sorry.

Regardless, this summer will be bass trap building season.

Before you build anything, you should get into the nerdy side of this, so you don't do the same shit we did in our rehearsing room. Basically the whole room is a bass trap. Cymbals are crushing though (crushing as in ear piercingly loud), so we've blown our 18" subs two times in six months because we can't hear any bass. I had to understand why it sounded like shit in there, and now I know, but can't afford to rebuild it.

Search for acoustic treatment, measure your room, and combine the data. There's plenty of DIY sites, forums and stuff out there that'll help you a lot. Remember that:
standing waves - diffusors.
Room resonance - Bass traps, Helmholtz resonator often combined with a diffusor.

Bla bla bla I'm getting boring. Go bananas and build the thing that's good for your room and budget.

 

[Aaron Smith]

I thought that too, but every time I read about someone treating their room their reactions are always like "I hear so much bass in my room that I didn't know was there now!" and what not... Why is that? Is it because of the standing wave cancellations that are eliminated? And if so, then isn't my original statement true...? I think really it can skew your low end in either direction I guess, so bass traps affect different rooms in different ways, based on the origin of the sound and the dimension of the room...

Regardless, this summer will be bass trap building season.

When someone treats their room and afterwards says "I can hear so much more low end!", in most cases I don't think they literally mean that the low end is louder. What they mean is that they can hear the low end much more accurately. There is a good chance that treating your room properly will result in you hearing less low end as far as decibels go, but the benefit is that the low end you DO hear will be a much more neutral representation, thus making it much easier to make good judgments.